Classic Intel: Anaconda - TV Review

'the 'hero', it is suggested, is going to be Eric Stoltz, now only famous for the amount of times he has found himself the subject of 'where are they now?'-style magazine features'

Anaconda is a throwback to 1960s creature features, was directed by the man who manoeuvred Tom Berenger through Sniper and holds a distinctly wobbly 4.3/10 rating on IMDb, yet, somehow, it has become the schlocky Animal Horror that it is OK to like. A large part of that is perhaps down to the fact that, somehow, despite all of the odds and the problems with it, it really isn't that bad a film.

The start is, admittedly, a bit wibbly. A scrolling title bar tells dubiously of 'man-eating snakes'. Danny Trejo shows up, promisingly, and then jumps ship pretty damn quickly. The 'hero', it is suggested, is going to be Eric Stoltz, now only famous for the amount of times he has found himself the subject of 'where are they now?'-style magazine features.

Pretty soon though, the film goes through a change in fortunes. The Christian symbolism which started ill-advisedly with Trejo, is dropped. Jon Voight appears attempting an approximation of several accents. Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube become the film's Riggs and Murtaugh. Somehow, from somewhere, completely not inkeeping with his character, Jonathan Hyde becomes the comic relief.

It makes what threatened to be a drab conflict between Stoltz and Voight's 'experts' something much more fun, as the out-of-their-depth crew battle mutiny and large slithery things with far too much intelligence than they should have. Voight is at his slimy best and Ice Cube and Lopez perform at least adequately. The snakes, meanwhile, actually look good in animatronic form but rather disintegrate when director Luis Llosa has to rely on cheap 1997 CGI. Still, there are worse creature features than this, with worse CGI, being churned out now (I'm looking at you Mega Piranha). Those after that sort of thing could do a lot worse than return to this, if only to play 'guess the accent' with Mr Voight.

2 comments:

I remember when the movie was out at the time and a friend of mine saw it and thought it was stupid. Especially since the film didn't have much logic over the fact that the bigger the creature, the slower it actually is. Even though it's a B-movie plot, I couldn't get into it despite Jon Voight's performance.

I enjoyed this watch of it, more than the last watch of it in fact (whenever that was). It is ridiculous but I can get on board with its ridiculousness and I think it gets the sweaty, threatening, swamp vibe just right.